Cubans cling to faith in harrowing escape

MIAMI {AP} The pilot's view from the sputtering, stolen vintage crop-duster wasn't encouraging: endless, swelling sea and gray sky. America was not in sight. The fuel was almost gone.

But the 10 people on the pirate flight out of Cuba had one thing left: faith. So they prayed as their plane headed into the water of the stormy Gulf of Mexico west of their homeland.

All but one survived and realized their dream to come to America. While the journey was extraordinary, it is a trip regularly taken by Cubans trying to escape their communist country.

The airplane flight began early Tuesday in Pinar Del Rio, a province west of Havana. Lenin Iglesias Hernandez, 35, left his home, supposedly heading for his job flying crop dusting planes.

A little later, his wife, 31-year-old Mercedes Martinez, left the house with their sons, Erik, 13, and Danny, 7.

Later, Hernandez landed at Pinar del Rio's Herradura Airport, where his wife, their sons and six others were waiting.

Hernandez had plotted the escape because of problems with an uncle who is active in the communist party and was a famous commander in President Fidel Castro's army during Cuba's revolution three decades ago.

They took off in the aging Antonov AN-2 Colt crop duster at 8:45 a.m.

The refugees' destination was Miami, but shortly into the flight Hernandez realized they were running out of fuel and lost, ending up far to the west of their planned route north.

By 10 a.m., two Florida Air National Guard F-15C fighters and an AWACS plane diverted from a training mission were searching for the missing plane.

In the meantime, Hernandez spotted a speck on the horizon, the Panamanian merchant ship Chios Dream.

The plane jolted across the rough water, with waves 4 to 6 feet high produced by Tropical Storm Helene. Fuentes suffered a concussion. A medical examiner would later determine that Ludel Puig, 21, suffered a fatal head injury during the landing.

After the plane came to a halt, the captain of the Chios Dream, Konstantinos Kalaitgis, watched the survivors scramble out of the fuselage.

They were taken to Key West, where Fuentes and his wife, who suffered a severe leg cut, were admitted to a hospital. Their son stayed with them.

The rest were taken to Miami, where they were given permission to apply for U.S. residency.

On Friday, Fuentes and his wife, 35-year-old Liliana Ponzoa, left the hospital. With 6-year-old son Andy in tow, they went to St. Mary Star of the Sea Roman Catholic Church in Key West to pray.

"I had so much faith that I knew we were going to live. I was saying 'calm down, calm down,' to the others," Ponzoa said. "Thank God we're alive."